Evaluating the Usefulness of Pair Programming in a Classroom Setting

Pair programming, the practice of two programmers working side by side on the same task on one computer, is a practice that is becoming increasingly prevalent in the computer science industry. Although there has been a large amount of research investigating pair programming in an industry setting, there has been little work done with pair programming in a classroom setting. Furthermore, the studies that have been done have concentrated on programming students with ample programming experience in a variety of languages. In addition to this, industry studies have focused in on the amount of work being completed rather than what is learned by the programmers. Therefore, this work will concentrate on students with considerably less programming experience, and focus on whether they learn better while working in teams. In addition, we will investigate how the difference in programming skill contributes to the amount learned. To do so, we have observed and interviewed students participating in pair programming to determine whether they are able to learn more and enjoy their work more when working in pairs. Finally, we participated in pair programming in a variety of settings to test it first hand. We found that despite some drawbacks, pair programming can be extremely beneficial. When used correctly, pair programming can be a valuable asset to the computer science classroom.